


Those Nights

by tenderbri



Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Getting Together, M/M, Sharing a Bed, The Brian May Band - Freeform, light smut with feelings, written from Jamie's POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:13:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29027022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenderbri/pseuds/tenderbri
Summary: It's the American leg of the Back to the Light tour and Brian has trouble spending his nights alone.
Relationships: Brian May/Jamie Moses
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	Those Nights

**Author's Note:**

> Last night, something possessed me to open a word document for the first time in months and hammer out this short vignette-style BrianxJamie piece. Consider this a further step in [@rushingheadlong’s](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RushingHeadlong/pseuds/RushingHeadlong/works) so beautifully led endeavour to make this incredibly niche ship a Thing. 
> 
> Title taken from [Those Nights – Bastille](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eLittIRa8A)

Jamie jerks awake, roused by a soft knocking on his hotel room door. It’s only 1am, he can’t have been asleep for more than an hour. Always so wiped out after a gig, Jamie mostly doesn’t bother with whatever after-show celebration Spike tries to pester him into joining, choosing instead to retire back to the hotel the band is staying at that night and crash on the nearest surface available – preferably a non-vibrating bed with soft sheets. 

Flicking on the bedside light and slipping out of bed, Jamie doesn’t bother with a shirt and he pads over to the door, knowing full well who’s waiting on the other side. 

Brian looms tall and thin before him, all freshly showered curls and tired eyes and Jamie barely utters the obligatory “Won’t you come in,” before the other man has swept past him, pulling off his own shirt on the way to Jamie’s rumpled bed. 

Jamie slowly closes the door and watches Brian battle with his skinny trouser leg and finally kick his jeans off completely, tossing them into a heap on the floor beside his already discarded shirt. Clad only in his pants, Brian slips under the covers on Jamie’s side, reaches for the light and flicks it off. For a few silent seconds, Jamie just stands there, fighting the usual onslaught of worry and misgivings about this whole bizarre situation. Then, with a sigh he lopes back to bed, sliding in behind Brian, and pulling him gently close.

The first time his boss found his way into Jamie’s bed was after the Atlanta show, their first headline gig and only three shows into their North American tour. The show had wavered on _just_ the wrong side of “live and dangerous”, with a bad sound check and several string breaks and missed cues throughout, causing Brian to be completely strung out before, during and after the gig. 

When Jamie heard that first fateful knock later on that night, he was shocked to discover an ashen-faced Brian in an absolute state outside his door, telling Jamie he couldn’t sleep and may he please stay over. Too shaken by Brian’s visible distress, Jamie let him in without another word. At first Brian curled up on the couch, long limbs knotted into such an uncomfortable looking pretzel that Jamie couldn’t stand this longer than five minutes and finally made Brian take the other side of the bed. 

In the morning, Brian thanked him quietly, looking slightly better rested than before, and he left before Jamie’s room service arrived.

After that first night it’s been an almost regular occurrence for Jamie to not sleep alone after gigs, even on better nights when Brian _does_ manage to be a strong and confident rock god whom audiences scream for. Jamie has come to expect the knocking, no matter how well Brian’s night has gone. Because he knows the aftermath is always the same.

After coming off stage and as the adrenaline rush leaves them all, Jamie can physically see the other man deflate, sees the strained smiles Brian gives the crew, notices the deep crease forming between his eyebrows as he sifts through heaps of Queen-themed fan gifts and letters, sees the hunch in his shoulders get more pronounced as Spike praises his vocal performance. On stage Brian mostly bounds about the same way Jamie remembers seeing in the Queen days. But as Brian gives mumbled thanks and says goodnight to everybody in the hotel lobby and shuffles off alone to the lifts, he has the air of a man years older. 

In the beginning they don’t utter a word to each other. Jamie stays on his side of the bed, Brian keeps his back turned and that’s how they usually both drift off to sleep.

When Jamie sees Brian’s shoulders start to shake one night he’s compelled to ignore it, to preserve Brian’s dignity. He pretends to be asleep the first time it happens, pretends not to hear the quiet sniffs from the other side of the bed.

By the time they reach Hartford, the tour is in full swing, the band have found their groove, Brian doesn’t seem quite as drained after shows. And yet still he comes to Jamie’s room. Still he shakes. And the night after the Hartford gig is the first time Jamie dares to reach out in the dark and squeeze Brian’s trembling shoulder. The other man blanches, evidently he’s been under the assumption that Jamie doesn’t notice these late night outpourings, that his band mate is fast asleep. But when Jamie shushes him and starts mumbling soothing nothings to him, Brian turns into him like Jamie’s his fucking life line, clings onto him like a dying man at sea. Jamie holds him the entire night, barely getting any sleep himself, instead watching Brian’s features relax as he finally slips away into a dreamless realm, breaths becoming slow and deep. Jamie’s shirt is sticky with sweat the next morning from where Brian’s body has remained plastered to him. 

He decides to forgo wearing a shirt to bed after that. Brian doesn’t seem to mind.

It seems like a natural progression of things when in Boston, he feels Brian nuzzle against the back of his neck, and he doesn’t flinch when lips brush lightly against his heated skin, because it’s somehow the most normal and obvious thing in the world. The logical next step.

Jamie has loved all kinds of people over the years, so he’s not plagued by any sort of crisis of identity as Brian’s mouth finds his in the darkness. His only thought is, “this could end very very badly for both of us.” 

In the darkness, he breaks away, holds the other man’s face in his hands, studies Brian’s gaze intently, before their mouths are on each other again and Jamie’s swallowing Brian’s choked moan as he nips at Brian’s plush lower lip. Somehow under the cloak of night, this is ok, different rules apply, professional working relationships can’t be destroyed, as long as Brian gives him a smile in the morning, leaves as if nothing happened.

It’s not that they outright ignore their strange new closeness outside the hotel rooms. Jamie’s stomach flutters every time Brian glances over to him, his gaze burning with more than just adrenaline and the heightened energy of being on stage. Every time he gives Jamie a cue to rip his own solo, every time Jamie sidles up to Brian in order to harmonise with the Red Special, it’s like they’re firing on another level of electricity. It’s the most visceral feeling Jamie has ever experienced.

When he fucks Brian for the first time in North Dakota, it’s obvious that there’s no coming back from this. No explaining it away as some late night _thing_ that is separate from real life.

In Edmonton, Brian pins Jamie to the bed with his hips, trying to map out every inch of him with his long elegant fingers, and Jamie gasps, “What is this?”

He needs to know. What they share every night is so beyond any definition and he’s worried that’ll only hurt the both of them in the long run. Brian doesn’t answer, preferring to grind slowly against him. Jamie goes along with it, finally flipping Brian over as both of them race towards the point of no return, letting out a broken moan as he slides home.

“Are you in love with me?” Jamie feels stupid even asking the question but he needs to know, must somehow give a name to whatever _this_ is. They’re in Vancouver.

Brian finally breaks away from Jamie’s neck and holds his gaze steadily.

“No,” he says after while. Jamie nods. 

“Are you in love with _me_?” Brian asks.

Jamie shakes his head. It’s the truth.

“I don’t think that’s what this is,” he says quietly.

“No...it isn’t.”

A bit later, as Jamie opens him up with his fingers and Brian is gasping his name, staring at him with wide, desperate eyes, as he tells Jamie breathily “I _need_ you” Jamie realises. 

He’s here to fill three bottomless voids without which Brian doesn’t know how to function. Jamie must be the one to make up for the fact that Brian can’t and never will feel part of that unit of four again.

In a sense, it’s a task greater than any other, one man trying to stand in for three, but Jamie feels a heady rush of tenderness flood him at the thought of Brian May needing him.

With the greatest care in the world, he enters Brian, holds his trembling hand as he sinks deeper, closer, let’s Brian cling to him like he’s his one focal point in the entire universe.

This definitely isn’t love. But it’s important. It’s necessary. And Jamie will do everything within his power to be the thing Brian needs.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this, feel free to leave a comment or a kudos :)


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